Narbacular Drop
Jul. 18th, 2007 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackNarbacular Drop is ingenious.
It's a free computer game. It's based in a simplistic 3D world, made out of orthogonal surfaces in one of two or three textures (so far) with a few objects.
The twist is that you can cause a portal to be connected between any two points -- aim at a wall, and open one end, and aim at another wall and open another end. That *sounds* like it would make getting anywhere trivial, but it's rather hard.
The portals are elegant. It doesn't feel like teleporting from A to B, but rather causing A and B to become topologically joined. You can see through, you can move in either direction, other things can come through. The portals can be anywhere, wall, floor ceiling, and gravity switches when you come through; there can be a moment where you see yourself running in your original orientation relative to the portal before reorienting and falling.
(It wouldn't quite work in real life because walls aren't impervious and objects aren't atomic. And actual wormholes raise questions about continuity of gravity, etc. But it fits here perfectly.)
(I always wanted to achieve that effect with penultima rules, warping the board rather than the pieces, but couldn't quite manage it.)
It's a free computer game. It's based in a simplistic 3D world, made out of orthogonal surfaces in one of two or three textures (so far) with a few objects.
The twist is that you can cause a portal to be connected between any two points -- aim at a wall, and open one end, and aim at another wall and open another end. That *sounds* like it would make getting anywhere trivial, but it's rather hard.
The portals are elegant. It doesn't feel like teleporting from A to B, but rather causing A and B to become topologically joined. You can see through, you can move in either direction, other things can come through. The portals can be anywhere, wall, floor ceiling, and gravity switches when you come through; there can be a moment where you see yourself running in your original orientation relative to the portal before reorienting and falling.
(It wouldn't quite work in real life because walls aren't impervious and objects aren't atomic. And actual wormholes raise questions about continuity of gravity, etc. But it fits here perfectly.)
(I always wanted to achieve that effect with penultima rules, warping the board rather than the pieces, but couldn't quite manage it.)
no subject
Date: 2007-07-20 03:47 pm (UTC)Narbacular Drop does sound fascinating, though.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 09:42 am (UTC)